I'm partial to the 'Self-coached climber' layout: A mix of color photos and drawings, chapter summaries, and good mix of big picture and practical content. The book also has a DVD -- neat idea, but so-so content. Craig Luebben's basic rock climbing book is also set up nicely as well.

The absolute best big wall book that I've ever read is "Big Wall Climbing: Elite Technique" by Jared Ogden. Every time I read it, I learn something new.

I think that the "Simple Stuff" of big walls has been gone through about a billion times in as many books. This book gives you the starting-out beta, as well as stuff like kind of elaborate pin stacking techniques, etc. Its an amazing book.

Something to consider:

With wall climbing, there are simple techniques for simple situations, then advanced techniques, for when the loads are moster, the its a winter ascent, or the pitches are hard nailing pitches. When a book tries to address all of this, a new climber can become confused about where to draw the line, and end up over-complicating things on their first walls, leading to situations that are frustrating at the least and maybe even dangerous.

Consider organizing key sections in two parts:

1) Getting Started (Example: Hauling)- Hauling for your first, simple wall: Basic setup, hauling devices available, things that can go wrong, how to get "Help" on the line from the second climber if need be, docking the pig, lowering out, selecting a static vs dynamic haul line.

As mentioned above Jared's book is a good example of what I think is a well written instructional book on wall climbing... The diagrams are fantastic. However, I wish it was more in depth in some areas.

Self coached climber is a very classy instructional book. The layout and presentation as well as the methodogy in getting points across are well put together.

Some things I would like to see in a new big wall book include:

More emphasis on climbing hammerless Cover cleaning and jumaring,in detail, such as folliwing traverses, etc. Living on a wall Include history. To go forward we need to understand the past.

Maybe link instructional film to this web site rather than dvd... Otherwise check out clean walls by Jello and Piton Ron if you haven't seen it already.

There is a lot of knowledge out there about specific soloing techniques and it would be great if it was possible to capture some of this.

Werner, books have their place. So do gurus. However, gurus are more rare than books, so books are a transition between not knowing and experience; so serve their purpose as sort of placeholders in a climber's progression - until the student is ready and the teacher appears. But you know that!

I think that video of these techniques would provide a tremendous advantage over still photos and diagrams. Aside from that, I can't think of a thing that you could add to Jared O's book to make it better.

I don't think it should be book OR DVD. It should be book AND DVD, maybe.

John Long's book on building anchors was how I learned to place gear and make gear anchors. The book was very helpful and after reading it I could just get out and climb without any doubt that I'm doing it safely. I still do 90% of things the same way as I learned from it.

Green Gear published something called a video guide to aid climbing. When I was learning to aid climb, the two main resources I had was John Longs book and this video. I watched the video over and over and learned a lot from it. I think this was done by Mittendorf (not sure). I am pretty sure it is out of print. The sections that helped me the most were on cleaning a pitch (methods of using your jumars to pass pieces or unweight pieces to clean them, obviously on pitches that are not straight up) and on lowering out. These are hard to show in diagrams.

The Jebus of visual information stuff like this is a guy named Edward Tufte, he has a web site at www.edwardtufte.com as well as 4 books. The earlier books are a little more on graphs and charts, but the later ones deal more generally with how to present information visually. He also does one day courses, you can find the listings on the web site, looks like he'll be in CA in January.

I have always liked Extreme Alpinism by Twight. There is a calculus book I like that explains every section in several different ways (written, algebraically, numerically and graphically), perhaps this approach could be modified to a climbing book (written, illustrated and demonstrated on dvd). Also in textbook fashion consider putting a few questions/example situations at the end of each section, some food for thought, then put your analysis of each question/situation in the back.

"John Long's book on building anchors was how I learned to place gear and make gear anchors. The book was very helpful and after reading it I could just get out and climb without any doubt that I'm doing it safely. I still do 90% of things the same way as I learned from it."

Uhhh... anybody besides me ever meet anybody with this mentality and know, almost immediately, that they were destined to die a premature death?

it could be an all encompassing book on everything aid and big wall. it could also be just focused on the fundamentals.

I just dont think the fundamentals are focused on in the books i have read. people learn how to do things but they never learn how to master them and really get good a the basics. i think most people bail on el cap because they are good climbers but still dont know how lead efficiently (its takes them 2+ hours per pitch to lead, haul and follow a Stovelegs pitch). or maybe they don't bail, but they end up having the experience of climbing the nose in 5 days instead of 3 which means they spend most of the time devoted to moving large loads instead of enjoying the climbing. i want people to get to Dolt or El Cap Tower with hours of daylight to enjoy them.... not setting up the bivy by headlamp.

ultimately i think a bigger contribution rather than showing how to clearly set up a 3:1 (which i still have never done on a wall myself), would be to teach people how to climb any c1 pitch in under and hour and any A3 pitch in under 2 or 3.

i know that is not sexy, but i have been approached by so many people who ask me the correct way to saw off a piton and then i see them lead and they still take 2+ hours on a C1 pitch because they use 4 aiders and still dont really know how to efficiently do things... because its never been laid out clearly in a book and most other wall climbers do things the same way. they might place that sawed off piton 5 times in their aid career. by contrast they will likely make 1000's of moves in aiders. if each time they move in their aiders they are 50% faster then that really ads up over time.

el cap has been a great part of my life, and i want to see more people who bail in the stovelegs or hold up other parties on 5 day ascents succeed while having more fun.

so i think the fundamentals will be the heart of the book. but i still might add in the more advanced stuff depending on how much feedback i get that there is a need for that in books.

i am also considering writing the book and posting each chapter here first to get feedback... do ill keep you all posted on that.

I read all the aid books and watched the 2 videos (Jello and Reid). I think you are right, the fundamentals aren't covered as well. Maybe it requires just getting out there and floundering a bit on a 3 pitch climb.
I'd be interested in your book. I agree that Ogden's book is awesome and if it had a DVD it would be even better.

you seem to state your motivation clearly enough: el cap has been a great part of my life, and i want to see more people who bail in the stovelegs or hold up other parties on 5 day ascents succeed while having more fun.

and you have to realize that your topo guides have opened up access to climbs in the Valley to a much larger set of people... the details are above and beyond what has existed previously. If you wanted to guarantee a good ascent up El Capitan, the old school way would be to find someone who had done it and go with them...

...it is a tall order to create a guide book/DVD to do that, but maybe you can.

First, you could illustrate the basic techniques in a gym, most people have access to gyms and probably could benefit from some relatively elementary exercises before going out on the rock.

It seems to me that practice is essential for moving quickly. You actually address this in your book Road to The Nose which provides a set of climbs illustrating different aspects of the challenges facing a climber who wants to do the Nose.

Perhaps you should expand that volume to include instructions on how to do the aid bits and bigwall techniques required for each of the climbs. The appropriate generalizations should be discussed, but you use each climb as an instructional demonstration.

The DVD would then follow you doing those climbs and showing people the techniques as they are actually practiced. The read/viewers would then be in a position to actually go out and do those climbs themselves.

Maybe you could be a video download on iTunes so people could load your instructions on their iPod or iPhone, well it gets a bit silly...

Just a thought... but it's exactly like your mother said: "practice makes perfect" and so it is for aid climbing.

Take a look at Craig Lubben's Rock Climbing: Mastering Basic Skills for a very well crafted how-to book. It won a National Outdoor Book Award. It's clearly written, well organized with clear illustrations.

Craig Connally's book Mountaineerin Handbook is intersting and I'm sure appeals to engineers, but he spends a lot of time taking shot at Freedom of the Hills (New vs Old School)..

I also like Mark Houston and Kathy Cosley's new Alpine Climbing book from Mountaineers. It's well written and includes some good stuff on choosing partners, risk management and other important mental, not just technique issues..

I think you're on the right track with focusing on efficiency. I only learned to aid climb about a year and a half ago and many of the resources I used to learn gave good overviews of general techniques but didn't offer a whole lot on how to be more efficient. The best resource we found for that was Hans Florine's book "Climb On" - he details out many steps you can take to improve your speed per pitch, transition times, and overall speed. This information was extremely valuable.

That said, other resources we used that were also valuable.
1) Don Reid's "The Video Guide to Aid Climbing". In the absence of having a guru teach you personally, having someone demonstrate the techniques on video is priceless. I found the video well organized although lacking in specifics sometimes (many of which were commented on above). We would watch the video and then head out to practice, then watch the video again to figure out what we missed, go out and practice, repeat.
2) Pass the Piton Pete's online resources. A treasure chest of resources on how to refine your big wall system.
3) John Long & Middendorf's book "Big Walls". A good all purpose book with good diagrams.

But there is no substitute for practice on the wall. There is only so much that can be taught via books and videos. Sometimes you just have to suffer to learn.